Public Sector Governance and Accountability Series: Budgeting and ...

Country Case Study: Kenya 479
inputs), over which the Ministry of Planning and National Development or
Ministry of Finance has complete control but which duplicate the function
of the MPER.
At the ministry level, these requirements mean that thin analysis capacity
is spread even thinner and that none of the documents receive proper attention,
partly because of capacity constraints, but also because they are not
perceived as the one instrument through which the ministry can justify its
programs and spending, put its case forward for additional funding, and
report on its achievements. The result is that the MPERs become compliance
documents, detracting hugely from their value as ministerial decisionmaking
tools. Ministerial capacity to undertake thorough PERs is varied. In
most cases, the MPER does not succeed in being a budget document that
drives a thorough ministerial MTEF process. The review is mainly undertaken
by the central planning units, with little involvement from the budget
and finance officers or from program managers. In some cases, ministries
have hired consultants to produce the document. Although the quality of
the resulting document is usually good, ministerial ownership of the analysis
is not always certain.
This problem is symptomatic of the slow progress in Kenya of deepening
the MTEF process to the ministerial and district levels: currently only at the
central level—and to a lesser extent at the sector level—is the MTEF process
starting to take on the characteristics of an MTEF approach. Only at that level
are top-down resource ceilings used and forums established at which claims
on available resources can compete on an equal footing. Moreover, the
progress even here is not complete: despite the improvements in analysis and
the layered discussion that happens in the SWGs and various sector hearings
and forums, in the final instance the budget still is often prepared behind
closed bureaucratic doors in an incremental fashion (see the following
discussion of the annual budget phase).
Arguably, until ministries take on the task of running thorough MTEF
processes involving all stakeholders, thereby bringing ministrywide commitment
to decisions made, the link between policies, budgeting, and budget
implementation will remain weak.
public expenditure review. After ministries have completed
the MPERs, the Ministry of Planning and National Development compiles
a national PER. The review provides a critical analysis and assessment of
government expenditure in terms of size, allocation, and management. In 2005,
the PER analyzed whether the allocation and use of resources were in line with